Heart valve repair and replacement is a procedure that has been practiced on many animals, including human beings. They were both end of life and disease-warranted circumstances that lead up to a decision to perform repairs to the heart. Many of these procedures require opening the chest cavity and cutting into the heart, in order to access the natural valves and sew-in a replacement valve structure. There are artificial valves and biological valves, and hybrids of the two.
For the most part, these require the open chest procedures. Open-heart surgeries have long recovery times and expose the patient to infection, as well as a higher chance of death as a result of the procedure or during the procedure, during which the heart is stopped and an artificial pumping system is used to maintain blood flow throughout the patient's body.
A relatively late development is that of repairing heart valves intravenously. There are some very recent developments in providing a replacement valve to the site of a natural valve via an intravenous catheter. However, these valves are expensive and must be a specific fit, so available valves are not always optimal. A high degree of skill is therefore necessary in installing the valve into any particular patient, because it may not be exactly the right size. Also, because the size of the replacement valves sit during surgery, over time, with growth and other health changes, it may become in correctly sized to maintain a secure fit.
What is missing in the art is a valve that can deliver a replacement valve to the site of a damaged or incorrectly functioning natural valve, be installed by intravenous catheter, and which can adapt to fit a wide variety of patients and valves, and which maintains a secure fit at the site over an extended period of time.
Also, patients and/or doctors must make a decision between using biological material valves and mechanical valves. Mechanical valves last many years longer than biological valves (which are typically made from the valves of swine or cows), but they are noisy, and are not well-suited for younger patients, because they are rigid and less pliant to match the changing shape and size of the heart than biological valves, and therefore require several more surgeries over the course of the child's growth into adulthood.